Gene interactions and pathways from curated databases and text-mining
J Biol Chem 2011, PMID: 21454471

Tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated factor 6 (TRAF6) associates with huntingtin protein and promotes its atypical ubiquitination to enhance aggregate formation.

Zucchelli, Silvia; Marcuzzi, Federica; Codrich, Marta; Agostoni, Elena; Vilotti, Sandra; Biagioli, Marta; Pinto, Milena; Carnemolla, Alisia; Santoro, Claudio; Gustincich, Stefano; Persichetti, Francesca

Huntington disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disorder caused by an expansion of polyglutamines in the first exon of huntingtin (HTT), which confers aggregation-promoting properties to amino-terminal fragments of the protein (N-HTT). Mutant N-HTT aggregates are enriched for ubiquitin and contain ubiquitin E3 ligases, thus suggesting a role for ubiquitination in aggregate formation. Here, we report that tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated factor 6 (TRAF6) binds to WT and polyQ-expanded N-HTT in vitro as well as to endogenous full-length proteins in mouse and human brain in vivo. Endogenous TRAF6 is recruited to cellular inclusions formed by mutant N-HTT. Transient overexpression of TRAF6 promotes WT and mutant N-HTT atypical ubiquitination with Lys(6), Lys(27), and Lys(29) linkage formation. Both interaction and ubiquitination seem to be independent from polyQ length. In cultured cells, TRAF6 enhances mutant N-HTT aggregate formation, whereas it has no effect on WT N-HTT protein localization. Mutant N-HTT inclusions are enriched for ubiquitin staining only when TRAF6 and Lys(6), Lys(27), and Lys(29) ubiquitin mutants are expressed. Finally, we show that TRAF6 is up-regulated in post-mortem brains from HD patients where it is found in the insoluble fraction. These results suggest that TRAF6 atypical ubiquitination warrants investigation in HD pathogenesis.

Diseases/Pathways annotated by Medline MESH: Huntington Disease
Document information provided by NCBI PubMed

Text Mining Data

Dashed line = No text mining data

Manually curated Databases

  • IRef Biogrid Interaction: UBC — TRAF6 (physical association, affinity chromatography technology)
  • IRef Biogrid Interaction: HTT — UBC (physical association, affinity chromatography technology)
  • IRef Biogrid Interaction: HTT — TRAF6 (physical association, affinity chromatography technology)
In total, 3 gene pairs are associated to this article in curated databases